Tuesday, May 20, 2008

House Votes to Sue OPEC, Overturn Laws of Cause and Effect

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved legislation on Tuesday allowing the Justice Department to sue OPEC members for limiting oil supplies and working together to set crude prices, but the White House threatened to veto the measure.

The bill would subject OPEC oil producers, including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela, to the same antitrust laws that U.S. companies must follow.

Clever. Following the first law of politics, point the finger in a slightly relevant (if you cross your eyes and stand on one foot) direction when your chickens come home to rrrooost.

It might work if we were the only customer for OPEC oil. You know, if there wasn't a huge ready market desperate for oil at almost any price. Certainly there are many rapacious villains within OPEC. So what? They're willing to drill for oil. We aren't.

It is Congress that has allowed the ban on drilling in ANWR to stand. It is Congress that has not acted to approve drilling in our coastal waters - better that Mexico do it. We have not built a new oil refinery in more than 25 years, and are not building any now, despite the dire warning of Hurricane Katrina, which threatened the few we have. It is Congress that has allowed ignorant, superstitious crackpots to halt nuclear power plants in this country, leaving the generation of electricity up to coal- and oil-fired plants. And it is Congress that allows the states to keep their own idiotic "environmental" recipes for gasoline. Do you remember what your gas mileage was when President Bush suspended the practice temporarily after Katrina? Mine was 25-30% better. Does the vastly reduced mileage under my state's gasoline recipe help the environment? Seems doubtful.

So here we have a pack of witless, giggling turds in Congress tilting at windmills. Wonderful. I'm sure it will help a lot.